Dimension Designer Perspectives

Dimension Designer utilizes Eclipse's Workbench environment which controlls visual layout via perspectives. A perspective defines the initial set and layout of views and editors. Within the application window, each perspective shares the same set of editors. Each perspective provides a set of functionality aimed at accomplishing a specific set of tasks.

Perspectives control what appears in certain menus and toolbars. They define visible action sets, which you can change to customize a perspective. You can save a perspective that you build in this manner, making your own custom perspective that you can open again later.

Dimension Designer perspectives include:

- Web Service- Default perpective providing Web service oriented views including a useful Web Service Advisor view to track the state and validity of your modeling efforts.
- Modeling- A more generic perspective not focused on Web services, but on modeling in general.
- SQL Explorer- Provides views and actions to perform tests on your VDB by connecting to your data sources and executing your test queries.

Web Service Perspective

The Web Service perpective includes 4 main UI components or groups of components. They include:

- VDB Explorer
- Web Service Advisor
- Model Editors
- Miscellaneous Views

The main Designer menu bar contains both a set of primary menus categories including: File, Edit, Search, Models, Views and Help. These action menus are described in more detail in Designer's Main Menus.

and global toolbar actions.

Modeling Perspective

The Modeling perpective is identical to the Web Service perspective except that the Web Service Advisor view is removed and the Properties view moves from the lower right window to the lower left as shown in the image below.

SQL Explorer Perspective

The SQLExplorer perpective includes 5 main UI components or groups of components. They include:

- Database Structure View - provices an updated view of your modeled data as seen from the perspective of your VDB.
- SQL History View - As you execute queries against your data, a list maintained in this view.
- Connections View - You can see any current connections to your VDBs.
- SQL Editor - Specify SQL and submit queries from this editor.
- SQL Results View - shows your query results in table-row format for relational models and XML format for Web Service or XML document queries.

Note: The SQL Explorer perspective will be opened whenever you Test your VDB.

### Opening a New Perspective

There are a couple of ways to open a new perspective:

- Using the Open Perspective button on the shortcut bar.
- Choosing a perspective from the Window > Open Perspective menu.

To open one by using the shortcut bar button:

> Step 1: Click on the Open Perspective button .

> Step 2: A menu appears showing the same choices as shown on the Window > Open Perspective menu. Choose Other from the menu.

> Step 3: In the Select Perspective dialog choose Modeling and click OK.

> The Modeling perspective is displayed.

> Step 4: There are several other interesting things to take note of.

> The title of the window now indicates that the Debug perspective is in use.

> The shortcut bar contains several perspectives, the original Web Service perspective and the new Modeling perspective. The Modeling perspective button is pressed in, indicating that it is the current perspective.

> To display the full name of the perspective right click the perspective bar and check Show Text.

> Step 5: In the shortcut bar, click on the Web Service perspective button. The Web Service perspective is once again the current perspective. Notice that the set of views is different for each of the perspectives.

Related Topics

- VDB Explorer
- Web Service Advisor
- Model Editors
- Web Service Advisor view
- Setting Your Designer Preferences
- Getting Started with Metamatrix Dimension

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